Half an hour later Mr. Birnes, Chief Arkwright and Detective Sergeant Connelly were on a train, bound for Coaldale.  Mr. Birnes had left them for a moment at the ferry and rushed into a telephone booth.  When he came out he was exuberantly triumphant.

“It’s my man, all right,” he assured the chief.  “He has been missing since Friday night, and no one knows his whereabouts.  It’s my man.”

It was an hour’s ride to Coaldale, a sprawling, straggly village with only four or five houses in sight from the station.  When the three men left the train there, Mr. Birnes walked over and spoke to the agent, a thin, cadaverous, tobacco-chewing specimen of his species.

“We are looking for an old gentleman who lives out here somewhere,” he explained.  “He probably lives alone, and we’ve been told that he has a little cottage somewhere over this way.”

He waved his hand vaguely to the right, in accordance with the directions of Red Haney.  The station agent scratched his stubbly chin, and spat with great accuracy through a knot-hole ten feet away.

“’Spect you mean old man Kellner,” he replied obligingly.  “He lives by hisself part of the time; then again sometimes his grand-darter lives with him.”

Granddaughter!  Mr. Birnes almost jumped.

“A granddaughter, yes,” he said with a forced calm.  “Rather a pretty girl, twenty-two or three years old?  Sometimes she dresses in blue?”

“Yes,” the agent agreed. “’Spect them’s them.  Follow the road there till you come to Widow Gardiner’s hog-lot, then turn to your left, and it’s about a quarter of a mile on.  The only house up that way—­ you can’t miss it.”

The agent stood squinting at them, with friendly inquiry radiating from his parchment-like countenance, and Mr. Birnes took an opportunity to ask some other questions.

“By the way, what sort of old man is this Mr. Kellner?  What does he do?  Is he wealthy?”

A pleasant grin overspread his informant’s face; one finger was raised to his head and twirled significantly.

“’Spect he’s crazy,” he went on to explain.  “Don’t do nothing, so far as nobody knows—­lives like a hermit, stays in the house all the time, and has long whiskers.  Don’t know whether he’s rich or not, but ’spect he ain’t becuz no man with money’d live like he does.”  He thrust a long forefinger into Mr. Birnes’ face.  “And stingy!  He’s so stingy he won’t let nobody come in the house—­scared they’ll wear the furniture out looking at it.”

“How long has he lived here?”

“There ain’t nobody in this town old enough to say.  Why, mister, I’ll bet that old man’s a thousand years old.  Wait’ll you see him.”

That was all.  They went on as indicated.

“The very type of man who would scrimp and starve to put all his money in something like diamonds,” mused Chief Arkwright.  “The usual rich old miser who winds up by being murdered.”